Bolstered by the Inflation Reduction Act and incentives in many states, heat pumps are supposed to be the secret weapon to home electrification, but recent sales numbers are falling short. A few of us Ad Hocers — Jim Kapsis, Brian Kooiman, and James Schulte — installed heat pumps in our homes in three different states in the last six months. We survived to tell the tale.

What was your experience working with a contractor to install the heat pump? 

James: We hear about it all the time but I certainly experienced it — contractors don't want to do this work. Because I was doing a full home renovation, I hired a general contractor and told him early on that I wanted to electrify. But he still installed gas plumbing in the house!

Brian: I was doing a major renovation, so had no choice. To be honest, the new system feels a little bit jerry-rigged to me. It’s this weird amalgamation of taking a heat pump and tapping it into an existing furnace. And we had a few installation errors, like the thermostat was never connected to the internet and the gas was never turned on. There was a whole comedy of errors to diagnose through before we got the heat pump working.

Jim: I was referred by my city’s energy manager to a small firm that only does electrification and energy efficiency. The owner cares about doing the right thing. His process involved doing a Manual J calculation, which tells you the size of the heat pump that you should be installing so that you don't oversize it or under undersize it. Every contractor is supposed to do this, but many don’t. I know because I had other bids!

Did your contractors tell you about the various available incentives?

Brian: My HVAC contractor didn't say anything about potential incentives — even though it looks like my utility offers them. And since I have a hybrid system, it doesn’t qualify for IRA incentives, which I found out from Jim after the fact (ha!). The only incentive I ever heard about was strangely from my gas provider, Centerpoint, for insulation work.

Jim: My contractor included the IRA incentives in the cost calculation, so I could see what the cost would look like on the other side, but I had to front the cash until I file my taxes next year. A fun fact that I learned halfway through the project (I should have known) is that the IRA would only cover the incentive for one heat pump per year, and I needed to install two.

James: It wasn't clear that the pricing I was getting included incentives. I had to look up my local utility incentives, and check with my contractor, who didn't know them. It was all very unclear. As it turns out, the utility incentive went directly to the contractor and “hopefully” got passed on to me.

Did your heat pumps work with your preferred thermostats?

Jim: I was forced to tear out my Nest thermostats and replace them with Mitsubishi's absolutely terrible thermostats. I wish I had known in advance. According to our installer, Mitsubishi only enables their own proprietary thermostat to operate the heat pump to the full level of efficiency. I really miss my Nest – so does my wife!

Brian: We also had to use the manufacturer’s thermostat, which broke my heart. I really wanted to get the Nest back on the wall. That’s actually something that I had asked the contractor about and they said, “Sure, the Nest will work,” and then later they said, “No, actually we can’t do that.”

James: We bought a Nest and then learned it doesn't work with our system. So we literally paid a hundred dollars for something that's sitting in my basement. I think a lot of HVAC contractors are used to people not knowing stuff and not caring. And so, they're actually not good at onboarding or even working with clients and customers through the process.

What market changes would quicken the pace of heat pump installations?

James: Building codes. In the states and municipalities that are going away from gas for all new builds, the contractors have to get better at working with heat pumps because electrification is the only option. Retrofits are hard because they are more expensive, and trickier. But mandating all new builds to not have gas would be huge.

Brian: If someone puts so much work into installing this technology, and gets close to the finish line and realizes there are other necessary investments — like updating your wiring or installing a new panel — that could derail a project. I think a whole package of complementary incentives administered by a single company will make adoption easier and lower the barrier of entry.

Jim: There’s no electrification industry yet of any scale. We need a Sunrun or Tesla of electrification. We work with two companies, Elephant Energy and Treehouse, that want to be those companies, and we’re trying to help get them there. Dandelion Energy is trying to do it for geothermal heat pumps.

Locations, models and overall ratings:

We rated our experiences on a scale of 1 to 10. 1=very easy, 10=very difficult:

Jim Kapsis, Alexandria, VA 
Heat pump model: Mitsubishi Single-zone Universal Heat Pump
Difficulty: 4

James Schulte, Chicago, IL
Heat pump model: Bosch IDS Premium Connected - Inverter Ducted Split Heat Pump
Difficulty: 7

Brian Kooiman, Twin Cities, MN
Heat pump model: Friedrich Breeze Ducted Mini Split Heat Pump (4-ton)
Difficulty: 6